A video blog featuring stories of individuals who started out their professional careers in the ADR field.

Did you begin your professional career by choosing a position in ADR? We want to hear from you!

Send us a video (or record a video directly from this site) by visiting the share your story page. If you have questions, contact Alyson Carrel by email at the following address: a-carrel AT law DOT northwestern DOT edu.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Heather Scheiwe Kulp

Heather Scheiwe Kulp - Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School(The following post is an adaptation of an Alumni Profile article in the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Negotiation and Mediation Newsletter, Summer 2014)

Heather’s career is a tale of many firsts. When she graduated Northwestern in 2010, she was determined to move into dispute resolution and like many individuals trying to work in ADR as a first career was told it would be near impossible. But Heather was determined to make it work and she became the first Skadden Fellow to be awarded a fellowship in dispute resolution. Heather’s Skadden Fellowship was with Resolution Systems Institute and focused on researching and designing mediation programs as a process for addressing the height of the foreclosure crises. After completing her fellowship, she was then hired as the first ever Clinical Fellow at Harvard’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. And now, Heather is the first non-Harvard grad to be hired as a Clinical Instructor position in the Negotiation and Mediation Program where she will start this fall.

Heather says her career aspiration started in law school when she took the Negotiation Workshop at Northwestern Law. Prior to this course, she had always seen negotiation skills in the practice of law, but didn’t realize that being a professional dispute resolution expert could be a career in and of itself.Heather relied on her entrepreneurial skills to creatively design her own path. In fact, Heather says that anyone who wants to enter the field of ADR as a first career needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset. She says, "I look at what a better outcome might be, then set out to design processesusing tools that may be underutilized."Congratulations to Heather as she starts her new position as Clinical Instructor at Harvard Law School! We are so proud of her and all the firsts she has accomplished.

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This blog was inspired by the "ADR: The Next Generation" presentation at the 2014 ABA-DR conference organized by Tracey Frisch, Donna Erez-Navot, Heather Kulp, and Alyson Carrel. The ABA-Dispute Resolution Section is generously providing support for this blog.